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The gnostic and polymath scholar Jonathan Zap recently wrote: ‘In the Garden of Eden story forbidden fruit is a metaphor for the awareness that would take you out of the state of infantile ignorance and therefore make you a threat to the forces that control you. In Genesis 3:5, the serpent tells Eve, “For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” From the Gnostic point of view, eating the forbidden fruit is like choosing the blue pill and finding out how deep the rabbit hole really goes. The alternative is to be a blind meat puppet eating the imaginary steak of the Babylon Matrix. The Zap Oracle presumes that the querent wants to eat the forbidden fruit and follow the path of the blue pill. ‘… Terence McKenna describes the Garden of Eden story as "history's first drug bust." He believed the forbidden fruit to be a metaphorical reference to psilocybin mushrooms that often grew under trees. Although many people may make foolish use of such forbidden fruit, it may be worse than foolish to allow the government to forbid access to mind-altering medicines.’ For Jonathan, it appears, the issue is clear. Forbidden fruit signifies a context of enforced ignorance and control, wherein the serpent appears as the voice of emancipation and enlightenment. At the very least I regard this perspective as limiting of the nuances traditionally inherent in the concept of forbidden fruit. Concerned with the integrity and provenance of the sources in question, especially of the Book of Genesis, I therefore want to examine this reading and use the opportunity to explore my own – alternative – reading. There are three main areas I wish to explore. Firstly, we notice that Jonathan’s scenario weaves together mythical strands variously deriving from Judaism, Gnosticism, Lewis Carroll and Terence McKenna. While I have no apriori objection to this allegorical eclecticism, the question arises, aside from Jonathan’s highly selective synthesis, what narrative continuity does his reading possess in the context of any one of his sources – the biblical canon in particular. Or – forget the canon ! – what continuity is there with the mere and minimal context of the verses immediately preceding and following his selected text? Secondly, how does his scenario resonate with the relevant perspectives of esoteric lore? And thirdly, which question follows directly from the previous, what insights regarding the human condition may we derive from his reading – apart from the revelation that life would be better if we all could get stoned without the inquisition in our face. If forbidden fruit is a metaphor, what specifically does it signify? Seeing that Jonathan has the answer to this greatest of literary mysteries, let him enlighten us concerning the rest of the story. We read that the Tree of Knowledge, as also the Tree of Life, is found in the midst of the garden. Can Jonathan point us to this mysterious centre and identify this Tree, so that we might help ourselves and eat all we can? One implied answer – specific and non-trivial – is that of allegorical reference to nature’s psychopharmacology. The reasoning bears scrutiny. Psychedelic substances reveal to us the axis mundi – the tree at the centre of the world. It follows that nature’s psychedelia constitutes the original forbidden fruit. But let us take note: they (the psychedelics) reveal – not they are, although I admit that the holistic language of the ancients tends to obliterate such fine distinctions. From the gnostic or mystic perspective proper, however, the axis mundi – the tree in the midst of the garden – is the spinal column of the upright human form, not a flowering plant or fungus. What indication is there of oppression or control, to use Jonathan’s term, prior to the events described. We read rather, ‘And elohim said, let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that moves upon the earth.’ (Emphasis added.) Adam was a god, in other words – the god of the earth, although he may not have ‘known’ this at the time. Innocence perhaps better describes this state than the infantile ignorance of Jonathan’s rendering. If it appears that the original state is misrepresented, what of the serpent’s claim regarding the forbidden fruit? Let us hear the serpent more fully: ‘Yea, has God said, you shall not eat of every tree of the garden? … You shall not surely die, for God knows that in the day you eat thereof, your eyes shall be opened and you shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.’ This, we note, is in direct contradiction to the prior assertion of yahweh elohim, ‘in the day that you eat thereof you shall surely die.’ The conflicting claims are then tested – the experiment is being performed, the fruit eaten. After some six thousand years, can we agree that we have a result? If so, where is the promised emancipation? What specifically is the knowledge gained? Is it knowledge in general? Some specific type of knowledge? A specific piece of information? What is that good and what is that evil? And what precisely has this knowledge wrought? It’s immediate consequence is that … ‘the eyes of them both were opened and they knew that they were naked, and they … made themselves aprons.’ One could paraphrase, saying that, knowing themselves to be vulnerable, they became fearful. Is this the vaunted emancipation? As to Terence McKenna describing the Garden of Eden story as history’s first drug bust, I would observe that the great natural philosopher occasionally had his tongue in cheek and that, on a few significant occasions, he missed the mark by exactly 180 degrees. What, finally, concerning the claim, ‘you shall not die …’? Has not death exercised its dominion over the man ever since the events in question? Over man, let us take note, the god of earth, created in the image of elohim! How does this jibe with the serpent’s claim? Quoth the woman, ‘the serpent beguiled me.’ And what of the man? Is he the master or servant of his acquired knowledge? There is then no indication that Jonathan’s reading resonates with the relevant context – either immediate or canonical. But what of forbidden fruit in the greater literary tradition? I suggest that Jonathan’s reading, at the very least, constitutes a narrowing of interpretive options. While the conspiratorial scenario represents one significant such option, there are psychological readings wherein the partaking of forbidden fruit involves certain adverse consequence from which it is intended to protect the subject(s). An entire tradition elaborates the theme that acquisition of some specific item of knowledge inexorably leads to the destruction of a certain idyllic state. I am thinking in this context of Greecian myths relating to Pandora, as to Eros and Psyche. The idea is that there are certain things which are better not known – not because a deity might be offended by disclosure, but inherently so. Given the mind’s potential for every conceivable hell, as well as every possible paradise, the principle seems entirely valid. I will now answer these my concerns in the context of a reading which I regard consistent with the biblical narrative as a whole, as with certain relevant perspectives as may be gleaned from the esoteric or initiated tradition. I shall also contend that deeper insights regarding the human condition emerge from this reading – insights metaphysical rather than merely political. My reading – and I consider this approach a significant key to the mystery – takes seriously the implicit claim of Genesis 1-3 of a natural order resonant with inherent universal negentropy – of human life as perennial as the atoms which comprise the physical form, with a subsequent fall from this condition. In other words, this is not ape-man theory, for which fact I make no apology. A further significant key, I suggest, is that of solipsism – the idea that the point of view, implicit in ancient mystical literature, is the embodied one, wherein ‘universe’ or ‘whole world’ equates with subjective experience. Accepting this perspective, the first question becomes immediately clear. Two human beings inhabit the garden, a man and a woman. Two trees are found in the midst of the garden – the tree of life and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Thus placed before us, in Genesis 2, is the central arcanum of the mysteries – man as tree of life, the microcosm subsuming the creative secrets of nature. Woman, by inference, is the other tree, as is stated in Job, ‘man that is born of a woman is of few days and full of trouble’. Knowledge of woman, in mystical terms, is death, whereas he that is called the second Adam – Jesus Christ – said, I am the bread of life that comes from heaven … the water that I give shall well up into a spring of eternal life … and so forth. Having thus identified the mysterious trees in the midst of the garden, we shall now inquire what it means to partake of the tree of knowledge. We note it is spoken of specific knowledge – the knowledge of good and evil. What does this mean? And how exactly is this knowledge acquired? It is apparent that the reference does not involve, at least at first, anything like an elaborate ethical or moral code. Such a code indeed does not appear until generations hence, when it takes the form of Mosaic Law. While it may be argued that the eventual law of commandments followed inexorably from the primordial bite of the forbidden fruit, so that a process was set in motion which could not easily be reversed, we notice that the primordial edict warned, do not take this path, for that way lies death! Here we face a logical paradox which is worth exploring. The edict warns against involvement with good and evil, while, at the same time, it appears to impose such involvement by presenting a moral dilemma – to eat or not to eat. Seen this way, the edict constitutes what is called a double-bind, also known as catch 22. That is, the imposition of the edict ensures that it is broken. (We may observe that moral arguments ranged against the Bible are often of this logical type. The generic case for the defence is that such critique involves the logical fallacy of incommensurates, as presently exemplified.) We observe that the primordial edict issues in a context preceding the moral dichotomy of good and evil. It thus defines a boundary, not between conflicting moral choices, but between moral choices as such and a condition entirely transcendent of moral engagement. As a matter of some interest, we observe that philosophers of the human condition, from the Taoist poet Seng-ts’an to Friedrich Nietzsche, arrived at an analogous position, namely one which points to a moral vantage beyond good and evil. Does this mean that moral conscience is inherently a negative thing? Surely not in the relativistic context of human society. However the biblical prophets, and arguably these philosophers, take us beyond this context. If Mosaic Law represents a late development of moral engagement, what is its inception? Useful here are perspectives deriving from developmental psychology as from Buddhist phenomenology. These suggest that the basis of moral intelligence, the experiential seed for conceptions of good and evil, is the basic dichotomy between attraction and repulsion, between pleasure and pain, between a concerted organic yes or no in response to experience. Although there lies, between these extremes, a range of ambivalent states, a fundamental polarity is established, and within this matrix, I suggest, the notion of a self, as an entity distinct from the rest of the universe, arises. This, I argue, is the critical, the pivotal turning point – ‘and their eyes were opened’ – which precipitates the human odyssey along the path of increasing moral sophistication, as of increasing scientific and technological prowess. For no longer does the man perceive holistic unbroken unity. No longer is there unqualified acceptance of the given. Now there is a self and an other. Boundaries appear, judgements are made, measurements and calculations performed. From a primordial holistic consciousness we descend into a mindset of analysis, of focus on phenomena ever more elusive, in pursuit of the promised emancipation. We might agree at this point with Jonathan’s surmise that eating the forbidden fruit is finding out how deep the rabbit hole really goes. How deep goes the rabbit hole? Does it not, in fact, continue forever, namely when we look at the universe with analytical eyes? While there is perhaps no rational way of determining this, intuition insists that it does, namely insofar as the unending depth of nature may be considered a function of the analytical way of seeing itself. According to cell biologist Michael Behe, for instance, the vista presented by modern molecular biology is one of irreducible complexity all the way down. How is the rational intellect, challenged by a mere half dozen variables, to respond to this fearful vista. It is a glimpse – again – of the abyss. The concept of the abyss, in the esoteric sense, defines the human condition with respect to the reason as confronted by the eternal, the infinite and the absolute. An incommensurate chasm separates the mind of analytic focus from the holistic experiential matrix. Yet it is the holistic matrix which sustains the resonance of universal negentropy. Closed ‘formal’ systems, by contrast, tend to disorder over time, thereby exemplifying the paradigm of death. ‘In the day you eat thereof you shall surely die’ thus takes on the significance of natural law. Death follows implicitly – first in the loss of holistic awareness, then in the loss of paradise, then physically as, in the course of one day (one thousand years), the organism succumbs to the ravages of time. Typologically this parallels the redemptive death of the Word made Flesh, as it does the ego death which accompanies the spiritual birth, as the process is reversed and the partial again becomes the whole. As for the serpent’s claim – you shall not surely die – this would seem to be, as such denials go, not entirely accurate. The assertion then thus far is that the original forbidden fruit confers analytic or relative knowledge, the basis of the experiential subject-object distinction, whereby the man becomes a cosmic exile, subject to the natural elements and ultimately death. Which brings us to the core of the mystery – to the question of the primal deed. How does one partake of this fruit? And what is that fruit in itself? What experiential event precipitates the plunge into dual or discriminating awareness? Insofar as woman, as we have seen, represents the fruit tree in question, the folkloric intuition would seem to be broadly accurate that it is sex – the profound focussing of conscious awareness in sexual attraction and consummation – that is primarily implicated. In mystic parlance the sexual gnosis condenses a mudra or knowledge seal, which may be understood as a form of hyperspatial tunnelling at the point of orgasm to a particular space-time universe. This, of course, is the rationale of sexual magic. Similarly it explains the negative regard for sexuality as per the ascetic model of mysticism. Could this model be correct? Does it follow that sexuality is incompatible with sanctity? Perhaps not necessarily as such, namely if we reflect on the significant intrusion of a third party – in the form of a talking serpent no less – into the man-woman dyadic relationship. Not Adam was Eve’s initiator, but the serpent. Eve then initiated Adam, thereby instituting the cult of the goddess in reversal of the natural spiritual current as represented in the Hebrew Tetragrammaton, יִ הּ וּ הּ : Spirit – Word – Man – Woman. As a result the woman gave birth – not to life, but to knowledge. (A search of relevant genealogies identifies the biblical Cain, being nowhere mentioned among the descendants of Adam, as the offspring or seed of the serpent.) Esoteric iconography has since merged the curiously incongruous and superficially antipathic symbols of woman and serpent. In Hindu mythology the serpent power, the kundalini shakti, is portrayed as an attractive young female with heavy breasts and ample hips. From her vulva, as depicted in temple carvings of South India, issues the serpent. Tantric and taoist sages, moreover, sought to repair the act of sexual congress, so that it might bring life to the practitioner, rather than death. We note in this connection that yahweh elohim is quoted upon the events in question, ‘behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil …’ – the man is become … not the woman, for that ordinarily sexual gnosis is death for the man whereas for the woman it is life – physiologically and in the act of conceiving. For natural man it is accordingly woman who holds the promise of life and of the paradise of God. From this perception arose the cult of the shakti, wherein grail maidens or vestals guard the flame of the king’s vitality, preserving the same in a consecrated chalice, wherein it is transmuted into the elixir, so that union is consummated at a higher level of symmetry. Stated simply, natural man enquires of the woman, which is to say, of nature and he does so by the methods of art and science, indicating goddess worship as natural religion – the highest to which natural man can aspire. This, I suggest, brings us closer to an understanding of forbidden fruit in the sense of primordial Eden, as of the path also which spiritual redemption must take. Accordingly we notice that, when the woman eventually did bring forth life – in the form of the incarnate Word, it was by the Word that she conceived. Yet this is not to deny that the concept of forbidden fruit well describes certain other scenarios of historic and archetypal significance. The serpent gods, which for some six thousand years ruled the Earth, were for most part highly secretive of the ophidian gnosis, guarding it within initiated enclaves of unmingled royal blood. In another instance, the now common Bible was withheld from the populace by the Roman Church, which perceived this document to negate its claims to authority. Yet a further significant instance is that concerning the psychedelic possibilities inherent in nature. The pertinent scenarios are diverse, as each society cultivates its own version of the unspeakable and the taboo. For the evanescent community of the enlightened, I would suggest however, there is no such thing as forbidden fruit, no moral restraint in this regard. There is merely a pragmatic consideration or caution to be observed – not biting off more than one can chew. |